Pharmacies which serve hospitals are required to fill many disposable unit dosage syringes or other medical containers or receptacles with identical quantities of an identical medical fluid. It is important that a high degree of accuracy and cleanliness or sterility be maintained in this procedure. A high productivity rate is also desirable along with the high standards of cleanliness and accuracy in order to most efficiently use pharmacy personnel and minimize cost without sacrificing quality.
Conventionally, this work is performed in a laminar flow environment and is often done entirely manually by piercing the needle of a unit dosage syringe through the resilient top of a bulk container and withdrawing the desired volume of fluid.
Prior art devices to aid in the manual filling of syringes include those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,602,272 and 3,734,147. More advanced devices, such as those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,197,285 and our prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,935,883, show crank-type filling machines. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,,182,692 and 3,292,667 show other filling devices.
The manual or semi-manual apparatus are, of course, inefficient for filling relatively large numbers of containers. While they require a minimum of investment, they also require tedious and extensive manual manipulation and depend upon visual determination and estimation of the proper dosage volume. They are, therefore, slow and labor intensive.
The prior art systems of others are often so bulky that they interrupt the laminar flow of the controlled environment so that it is no longer aseptic. Further, such systems often use fluid conducting elements which are designed for a unique mechanical function on the particular machine. They must be reused and therefore require disassembly, a thorough cleansing, sterilization and subsequent sterile reassembly for reuse.